Infidel Superstition by Burlington Hawkeye

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 22, 1882

Infidel Superstition.

By Burlington Hawkeye

IN treating these great problems of life, Mr. Ingersoll has a fascinating and a plausible way of stating things, but they certainly are as unphilosophic as they are untenable. "Water always runs down hill," says Mr. Ingersoll. But it does not. Sometimes it runs up hill, and we call it capillary attraction. We have a mode of explaining it by the attraction between the particles of mobile matter and the inert matter of the tube in which the fluid rises. Mr. Ingersoll would explain it by saying that the fluid rises because it rises! That is certainly childlike and simple, but it is hardly in keeping with the role of a philosopher who proposes to dethrone God—the God who is the designer and creator of the universe. We not only find that Mr. Ingersoll is mistaken in asserting "water always runs down hill," but there is a wonderful process of nature that exceeds even capillary action. The life-bearing sap ascends the tree and carries with it nourishment that sustains and enlarges the plant. The tree has a system of water works that actually extends its own water mains. This phenomenon, we are told by Mr. Ingersoll, happens because it happens! If that is not superstition that eclipses anything of the kind so vehemently denounced by him, we do not know what superstition is. Its genesis is clearly traceable to the pagan belief that the world is a great plane resting upon the backs of four mighty oxen, and the oxen rest upon a great elephant. What the elephant is resting upon, the pagan belief failed to state. Mr. Ingersoll goes one step further and affirms that the elephant rests upon himself.—Burlington Hawkeye.